


Friendly Chat

by Brillador



Series: Our Fine Town (Next Generation) [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship, Comfort/Angst, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Light Angst, Middle School, Next Generation, Other, Post-Underworld (Once Upon a Time), Secrets, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 13:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6755947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brillador/pseuds/Brillador
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumplestiltskin and Belle’s daughter is learning to control her magic from her father. The last thing she expects is for Neal Nolan to come to her looking for magic lessons. They get to talking and eventually make a deal with unforeseen consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friendly Chat

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my Next Generation verse. Takes place about six years after the events of "Long-Distance Call."

“Forget it,” Téa Gold said.

Neal Nolan looked as though he’d been flicked across the nose. “Why not?”

The girl gave him a razor-edged glare that he had the wit to shrink from. “I’m not some freak show for your entertainment, Nolan.”

“That’s not what I meant!”

He was a grade above her, yet the hunched posture as he sat next to her at the outdoor table placed them at a relatively equal level. The weather had warmed enough that kids resumed spending their lunches or free periods outdoors. Not all of them, so tables were generally free or occupied by only a couple students at any time. Just her luck, Téa had found a table to herself, only to endure Neal “Charming Jr.” Nolan’s intrusion on her reading. She was just about to finish the second-to-last chapter of _The Last Unicorn._ The timing could not be worse.

For some reason, she hadn’t scared him off yet, much as she was inclined to. They’d acknowledged each other when she started kindergarten, but neither that nor their status as “extended family” prompted them to initiate a friendship. Just as well, she’d decided. It would’ve felt like pity more than genuine interest on Neal’s part in welcoming his nephew’s aunt (still bizarre to think about) as the new kid in town. So, what explained his sudden appearance at her table over six years later? This was bordering on worse than pity. More like exploitation blended with morbid fascination.

Téa regarded Neal with no more trust than before the word ‘magic’ left his lips. At least his response to her rejection wasn’t the whining of a spoiled child denied a long-coveted toy. He looked rather desperate. It wasn’t just in his grimace. His right hand was balled on the table, so tight the knuckles were going pale.

After a moment of stubborn resistance, she relented. “What do you mean, then?”

Neal’s hand loosened but remained curled, like a hermit crab trying to hide in its shell. It finally unfurled so he could gesture as he spoke. “I just want to know what it’s like to use it. And if it’s something that, well, anyone can learn.”

“You think I’m going to teach you magic?” She would’ve laughed if it wasn’t such a boneheaded idea. “As if! I can barely control my magic as it is.” She brushed her gaze over him. “What, have you tried it?”

“No.” He actually looked away. What did he have to be embarrassed about? Most people in Storybrooke couldn’t use magic, including his parents and their shared nephew Henry. It’s not like anyone was expecting it of him, right?

“What’s the big deal, then? You don’t need magic. You’re Prince Neal.”

Neal made a disgusted noise unbecoming the title. “Yeah, Prince Neal. Prince Charming, Jr. I’m not a real prince, you know. Not here. I’m just Neal Nolan. Not anything special.” A brokenness spilled into his voice on that last word.

Téa didn’t know whether to pat him on the shoulder or smack him. “For crying out loud,” she grumbled. “What’s so bad about that?”

His head snapped up, as though she’d just insulted him. “What’s so bad about it? So it’s fine to be seen as nothing but a—a copy-and-paste version of your parents?”

Téa rolled her eyes. Not a comforting answer, but honesty was better in this instance. “I can just imagine how many people would love to be the son of Snow White and Prince Charming.”

“My sister is their kid, too,” Neal deflected, “but that’s not all she is. She’s the Savior, she’s a mom, and she’s a powerful sorceress! You see what I’m saying?”

This time she did give his words thought. “Maybe. So you think magic is going to help you be special, too? But wouldn’t that just make you like Emma?”

Neal started to speak. The half-formed words tripped over each other. He sat back, deflating, defeated. But his energy spiked just as quickly as it had dropped. “It wouldn’t be just the same. She didn’t learn about her magic until she was a grown-up. If I start learning now—”

“Look, I’m sorry,” Téa cut in. “If you want to learn magic, go ask Regina. Or Emma! Your parents should be fine with that.”

“Yeah, you’d think so.” Neal folded his arms on the table and dropped his chin on top of them. “Every time I bring it up, they go on that ‘you’re special just as you are’ crap.” He and Téa let a quiet half-minute pass. Then he straightened while still leaning on his arms. “They don’t want me to be like Emma. She’s the Savior, and I’m … I’m the baby. I’m the one they gotta keep safe.”

In a flash, Téa recalled a dozen snippets of conversations with her mother, all of them about her practicing magic. Her mom never stopped her from learning as much as she could, but there was always a little warning between the words—“I just want you to be safe”—“What if you get hurt?”—“Magic can be unpredictable”—“I couldn’t stand it if something happened to you.” Words of love. Words of fear. And what was her mom afraid of? What was she really afraid of? Maybe the same thing the Nolans were for their son. Their youngest child.

“I shouldn’t be sitting around being a normal, boring kid,” Neal continued. “Henry doesn’t have magic, and he went and found Emma when he was, like, ten! I’m almost thirteen! It’s not fair.”

Téa leaned on the table, mirroring Neal but more directly facing him. She watched him in silence. He stared into the table, spent from griping. The absence of words cleared the air enough for rationale to step in. She did think carefully, too. She thought of what had happened with her and Scarlet Mills when Regina caught them in the woods. She thought of her father explaining how magic needed careful treatment, that even old wizards made dangerous mistakes. She thought of the voice who visited her from time to time, always asking how she was feeling, how her studies (both mundane and magical) were going, and how important it was to remember that magic could be a curse as well as a blessing. She hardly needed anyone telling her that. She’d seen it herself. She’d done it herself. She also thought of Scarlet’s smiling face as they made flowers grow out of rocks and sparks dance in the air with the fairy wands. Téa remembered the girl’s crushed look when she and Regina left the pawnshop, the latter declaring that if “this” didn’t stop, she’d put an end to the friendship.

Téa slowly breathed in. “Okay, here’s the deal.”

Neal rolled his head to look at her.

“I’m not going to show you magic. I’m not going to teach you magic. But I can talk to you about it.” Téa reached for her backpack. In short order, she had a leather-bound book too old and worn to be a school textbook. She showed Neal the cover, which had no letters but instead an intricate design of interlocked symbols. “Dad let me borrow this to read on my own. It’s like a beginner’s guide. You might find it boring, but … if you accept my deal, we can look at it together.”

Neal propped himself up while appraising the book from afar. “If it’s a deal, what do you get out of it?”

Good question. With a creeping smile, Téa tapped the book’s spine. “Hmm … how about … you can pay in sodas. One can per session.”

“That’s it?” He snorted at the demand.

“Hey, you got a problem with that, you can ask your sister for help. You really can’t talk to her?”

“I think if I did, she’d tell Mom what was going on, even if she didn’t mean to. My family is terrible with keeping secrets.”

Mostly satisfied with the answer, Téa shrugged. Her hand came up. “Let’s shake on it. Deal?”

“Deal.” Neal answered with surprising confidence. His handshake was firm. “So, what soda do you want?”

She warned him it would be a different flavor for each conversation. For now, Sprite would do. She barely had to finish before the boy was up and off to fetch the beverage. By the time he came back, they had only two or so minutes before the bell for class rang.

“Here,” she said, handing the soda back to him, “hold on to that for later, if you still want to talk today.”

There was no way he would keep up with this beyond a week. Maybe two.

Two months later, with summer vacation rushing upon them, the sixth-grader and fifth-grader finished the first dusty book. “I’ve got another,” Téa said. It was a little thicker and already filled with bookmarks for a dozen passages she was most interest in sharing.

Neal smiled, then grew contemplative. “How should we meet during the summer?”

The thought had crossed her mind a few times, only to be chased away by the certainty that Neal would get bored with their chats any day now. They didn’t even always look at the book. Sometimes he just asked about her personal experiences, starting with how magic felt and working up to how she concentrated on certain spells. She never demonstrated, and he never asked, as per their agreement. Even so, the reality of what had spawned from their almost daily talks hit her with intense clarity. “Oh. Well … we could ask our parents to let us visit.”

“I’m still not sure if I should tell mine about this.”

“It’s not like you can keep it a secret forever.”

“Not forever. Just until we know that I can’t use magic at all, or if it starts exploding out of my hands or something.”

Téa shook her head, amused. “If you say so. What about the summer?”

“Email?” he suggested.

It would have to do, as long as their parents were never inclined to sneak through their email accounts. Fortunately, even after living in this world for almost forty years, the previous generation mixed with technology as well as water did with oil. Emma was the one exception. They had to watch out for Henry, too.

“Maybe we’ll see each other around,” Neal offered as they came to the end of their lunchtime. “Like at the library. Your mom works there, right? Could we trust her?”

Her mother would probably sneak some mention of these meetings to her dad. From there, who was to say if it would get back to the Nolans? It was their best option, though. Téa agreed they’d meet at the library once a week and fill in the down time with emails. Just as the bell rang, the pair got up. “I’ll take that,” Neal said, partly reaching for Téa’s empty can of Ginger Ale. She gratefully handed it to him, and he hurried to the recycling bin where he dropped both her can and his own can of Dr. Pepper.

They met on Monday mornings, the quietest days at the library in the summer. It reduced the chances of being spotted by a family member (aside from Belle—that was unavoidable) or someone who would blab. They arrived separately but came to choose an out-of-the-way corner. Téa made a point to check out and return library books as a pretext. Belle was more than pleased to see her daughter coming on her own regularly. However, by the fourth week into summer break, a pattern came to her attention. One morning Téa came in after Neal, not knowing that until she met her mother at the circulation desk with a copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles.

“Finished it already?” Belle said, impressed.

“Yeah! The fastest I’ve finished a Holmes story. Did that new copy of the short stories come in yet?”

“Not yet. Maybe you should try Poirot while you’re waiting.” The corner of Belle’s mouth snuck up. “Does Neal like detective stories?”

Téa shuddered in shock. “Huh?”

Belle was fighting not to make her smile too wide. That couldn’t be a good sign. “I wondered if that’s what you two have been meeting about since summer started.”

Heat flashed over her face, but Téa put on a confused pout. “I didn’t notice him. We’re not meeting together.”

“Téa, you know how I feel about lying.” The firm tone Belle flipped into still carried a kind undertone. Even so, if Téa pushed her luck, it would be a lot less nice in a short time. “Now, what’s really going on?”

“It’s … it’s no big deal. We’re just … friends.” The word came out stilted. It was weird to say. Scarlet was her friend, although they hadn’t been able to hang out beyond school hours since that wand incident, and now it was like Scarlet was, to some degree, avoiding her. But Neal? He saw her as a means to an end. Nothing more. Just because he drank soda with her and listened to what she said, and he was awfully eager for them to see each other over break—

“Just friends?” Belle asked.

Téa nearly screamed at the insinuation. Whoa, that was even worse! “Yes! Just friends. I mean, we’re more like acquaintances. We just both like the library.”

The warning stare Belle had been giving evaporated. She was back to smiling and trying not to full-out giggle with delight. “All right. I’ll leave you to it.”

Catching her breath, Téa began to walk to the far end of the library, only to stop and backtrack to the desk. “Mom, you wouldn’t mind keeping this between us, would you?”

Belle frowned, puzzled and curious once more. “What do you mean?”

“Well, Neal is … he’s kind of sensitive. Fragile ego and all that. If the kids at school knew we were friends, they’d give him a hard time.”

“That’s absurd.” Belle left the stack of books and bent to meet her daughter’s eye-level. “Anyone would be lucky to have you for a friend.”

A few seconds were needed for the meaning to take hold. Téa opened her mouth to dismiss the motherly claim—then stopped. She was caught in an epiphany. If the kids at school ever did have a problem with Neal and the “Dark Runt” starting to pal around, the validity of Belle’s statement wouldn’t change their minds. But that wasn’t the point. Téa could see worry filling her mother’s expression. Maybe she’d been worried since Regina’s threat to completely cut off Téa from Scarlet, a precedence for any attempts Téa might make to form friendships.

Téa touched Belle’s hand. It was unexpectedly tense. “I know that. It’ll just be easier this way. For both of us.”

Belle sighed. Her hand turned over so her fingers could return the contact. “All right. But you shouldn’t keep it secret forever.”

“Not forever,” Téa said. She smiled as she remembered what Neal had said that first day. “Just until it blows up all over town.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Now, go on. Don’t keep him waiting.” Belle kissed Téa’s forehead. As the girl moved away from the desk, her mother waved and went back to the books in her charge.

Neal looked like he’d been caught with a porn magazine when Téa told him about her conversation. She jerked on his sleeve to shake him out of it. “Calm down! We have a cover now. Just be cool and Mom will make sure we’re not found out.”

“What kind of cover is that?” he squeaked.

“Hey, would you rather your parents thought you were friends with me, or that you were learning magic from me? We can act like one is happening without the other.”

Neal shut his eyes and plopped back in the cushy chair. “Either way, they’ll think you’re corrupting me.”

“That’s rich—it was your idea.”

“I know it was!”

“Shh!” She kicked his foot.

He grumbled. After some wiggling to sit up, he rested his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. For the son of a bandit princess and a dashing prince, he sure moped a lot. Téa almost said so. She changed her mind when Neal spoke. “I’m sorry. If it’s any consolation, I’ll be honest with them if they find out. It was my idea. I made you sneak around with me.”

She couldn’t help a snicker. “It’s not like we’re dating, you dolt. Worse comes to worse, your parents will dislike me and my dad a little bit more than they already do.”

“Mom and Dad don’t really not like you. I think they’re more worried of your dad’s influence.”

Téa let that fact sink in. She trusted Rumple. Sure, sometimes they talked about dark magic and the stuff that fueled it, but he’d made it clear that he didn’t want her learning that unless as a desperate resort. He’d been up front about his own use of dark magic. He was the Dark One, after all. He’d also made it clear that he wanted her to focus on light magic until she was old enough to use more dangerous stuff responsibly. That combined with her mother’s trepidations cemented any question of Téa’s “corruption” under her father’s tutelage. Still, she and Dad had talked about those dark feelings—anger, pain, selfishness—just as she was talking about magic as a whole with Neal. She wouldn’t rely on her darkness, she’d resolved, but those talks with Dad made the ugly feelings lurking in her heart not so shameful. They were a part of her, inescapable. The best thing was to confront and accept them, not bury them until they festered into an uncontrollable maelstrom of dark power.

“Then tell them,” Téa said, “that as long as magic is a potential part of you, you don’t want to run away from it. You shouldn’t. You should try to understand it and accept it as part of you. If not, how will you deal with it when you do face it?”

Neal stared ahead for a while before shyly looking at her. “Yeah. Exactly.”

It took a while, but the mopey attitude fell away. To break up some of the tension, Téa shared with him her copy of War of the Worlds. She was closing in on the last chapter, and if he wanted, he could borrow it when she finished, since he’d mentioned getting into Star Wars comics. Neal was blindsided by Téa’s fascination with sci-fi. That launched them into a prolonged debate about the similarities between science fiction and fantasy, and then magic and science in the real world. By the time their conversation circled back to solely magic and the book she’d brought, Neal had cheered up. Their heads soon bent over the old text, smelling of ancient libraries in need of dusting and a resilient dragon-hide binding. It was a soothing aroma. The smell brought her back to sitting in the schoolyard or on a park bench with Scarlet, looking at a similar tome and trying to riddle out its spells and runes. Téa also found comfort in the warmth Neal’s body gave off at this proximity. Close to three months ago, she’d cringed at the thought of letting any part of him touch her, and distrust had made her joints lock. Now their positions were so familiar it was like they’d been doing this for years.

Téa gasped.

“What?” Neal asked.

“Oh, uh, nothing. This, uh, this bit here reminded me of something Dad told me.” As she elaborated on this false reason, Téa felt another epiphany set in. She was friends with a Nolan. And it was weirdly nice. This wouldn’t end well.


End file.
